Thursday, January 31, 2013

Rick Reilly is an unimaginable douche.

I am gonna be blunt here. I am not a fan of Rick Reilly. I find his work after leaving Sports Illustrated to be some of the most self righteous, condescending works ever put on paper. But yesterday the piece he wrote on San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was far away one of the most ridiculous and self serving pieces I have ever read.

Trust me, I know what's best.

He begins by telling the tale of how his own daughter, close in age to Kaepernick, is also adopted. Good for him for opening his home to a child in need. That’s my last compliment in the direction of Reilly. He goes on to tell us the tale of how Kap was adopted, and how his adopted mother would send updates to the birth mother until she asked her to stop with the updates. That’s where the story should end. Instead he goes on to tell how basically he’s a weirdo for not wanting to meet his birth mother. “That's odd, since many adopted kids are crazy curious about their birth parents, and their adopted ones,” he espouses dickishly. First and foremost you are not adopted and what works for your daughter may not work for this guy.

He doesn’t stop there; he quotes a “friend” of Kaepernick who stated to Yahoo sports that Colin feels it would be treasonous to meet his birth mom. That’s fine if true, but not to Reilly. According to him, it’s not treasonous “It's healthy. It's healing. It's natural.” Who the hell are you sir to tell him what is healthy, healing, and natural for him? Again he is not your daughter. His birth mother had a chance, she told the family to stop sending her updates. She made her choice.

I think this story annoyed me to such a level because I have had self righteous ass clowns tell me what is best for me as well. Granted I was not adopted but I did not grow up knowing my father, by the time an attempt to contact me was made I was an adult. I have heard the unsolicited advice of “it will be better for you to know him.” When the fact is now at almost 30 there truly is no need to do so. For a long time there was anger there but no more. As I got older I just began to appreciate the strength of those who were there moreso. So now I don’t hate him but no emotions are there. So I imagine like me he reconciled any feelings or needs to speak to this woman a very long time ago and focused his love and attention on those who were there to care for him. Unlike Reilly I understand that this is not about his birth mother, this is about him. It’s not his job to make her feel better for her decision. So while it worked out for his daughter, again she is a completely different person.

Maybe he should stop trying and milk human interest stories out of everything and go back to claiming he broke news on twitter.